The 7 Worst Things Airline Pilots Have Done Mid-Flight

People with a fear of flying often cite the sense of helplessness as one of the most terrifying aspects of the phobia. When you travel by air, you're entrusting your very existence to someone you've likely never met, nor know anything about, and that can be disconcerting. But of course, flying is the safest form of travel there is, thanks to endless safety measures and professional, competent flight crews.

It is a little harder to share in that unshakable confidence if you're on a flight where ...

#7. A Pilot Rants Over the Intercom About Sex With His Flight Attendants

Getty"My shrink told me I had mother issues, but that just gave me a boner."

His lack of sex, as he would go on to explain to dozens of listening strangers, was through no fault of his own, but rather that of Southwest Airlines. They had apparently implemented a hiring policy that allowed for, in his opinion, far too many flight attendants who simply didn't meet his standards. He starts out with a statistical analysis, playing it conservatively by only offending homosexuals and older women:

"Well, I had Tucson to Indy all four weeks and, uh, Chicago crews ... there's 12 flight attendants ... 11 fucking over the top, fucking ass-fucking homosexuals and a granny."

Via Momgrind.com"Oh yeah? Well, you should have seen me back in the day, sonny, before the gender reassignment."

He then upped the stakes by tossing in the overweight ladies, henceforth known as "grandes":

"Eleven. I mean, think of the odds of that. I thought I was in Chicago, which was party land ... After that, it was just a continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes ..."

And then finally, he admitted what most of us were suspecting all along:

"Oh I don't give a fuck. I hate 100 percent of their asses."

Getty"And the Mexicans. Man, don't even get me started on the Mexicans."

He goes on and on, bemoaning the lack of acceptable plunder-caves for his lonely penis (declaring only one prospect to be "partly doable"), until finally an air traffic controller is able to interrupt and get on the air to advise, "OK, whoever's transmitting, you better watch what you're saying." Oblivious, the pilot blundered on through the warning (and through the persistent sounds of countless other pilots and controllers trying to key up their mics), delivering a fascinating anecdote that ended with, "... but they're still mopeds, you know what I mean? I still wouldn't want anyone to know if I had banged 'em."

Finally, the same air traffic controller is able to break in again and says, "OK, someone's got a stuck mic and, uh, telling us all about their, uh, 'endeavors,' and we don't need to hear that." There is nothing further from the pilot, who by this point had managed to clog up air traffic for several minutes over one of the busiest airports in the country while other planes were trying to land. A Southwest spokesperson would later tell reporters that the "pilot had been reprimanded, suspended without pay ... and sent to diversity training" as a result of the embarrassing and offensive rant that went out over the Texas airways, but in a small act of pity toward his shitty sex life, refused to divulge his name.

"Around here we just call him Grande McGrannyFuck."

#6. A Fistfight Breaks Out Between Pilots and Crew, then Spills Out into the Cabin

If you were to make a list of the top five things you never want to see a pilot do, right near the top (perhaps behind only "falling out of the cockpit with a knife in his back" and "asking passengers over the intercom if anyone has any heroin") would have to be "getting into a brutal fistfight with the crew, right there in the aisle."

Getty"I'd like to fist you a question. Sorry, I'm not good with puns."

Yes, that happened, on an Air India flight. A 24-year-old "air hostess," Komal Singh, claimed that the pilot had groped her during the pre-flight briefing, presumably during the demonstration of the aircraft's flotation devices. She told this to the chief flight attendant (or "purser"), a male and a friend of Singh's. Instead of telling her to file a grievance once they were all safely on the ground, the man decided that vengeance could wait not a moment longer. He burst into the cockpit like the shark from Jaws to confront the guilty party.

Getty"If suddenly things get vertical and we all start floating, just sort of punch us toward the cockpit."

At one point during the brawl, the pilot likened the scenario to a hijacking, and threatened to divert the plane to Karachi for an emergency landing. Eventually, the combatants either beat each other into exhaustion or suddenly realized the colossal stupidity of holding a Brawl for All aboard a commercial airliner involving the only people present who could actually fly the damn thing.

Getty"The pilots are dead. It's your time to shine, grandma."

After an inquiry by the authorities, both pilots were cleared of the sexual harassment charges, but in regards to the brawl, everyone involved got "charge sheeted." Which we're thinking is less than what a post-9/11 flight attendant would get in the USA if he had burst into the cockpit with the intention of punching the pilot. Speaking of which ...

#5. A Pilot Gets Stuck in the Bathroom, Causing a Terrorism Scare

Getty

On a recent Chautauqua Airlines flight from North Carolina to New York, the pilot left the controls while the plane was in a holding pattern for landing to go make a quick trip to the bathroom. The affair concluded, he attempted to leave the bathroom and return to the cockpit, but found that due to some malfunction with the door, he was now locked inside.

Slowly realizing that his life had somehow become a Mr. Bean movie, the desperate pilot began shouting for help, alerting a nearby passenger who told the pilot to hang on while he got the attention of the copilot. This good Samaritan made his way to the front of the plane and began pounding on the cockpit door, shouting about a trapped pilot in his heavy "Middle Eastern" accent.

Via ABC NewsABC News was kind enough to supply this diagram, showing that the shitter is in the ass-end of the plane.

When asked to clarify just what the hell was going on, he responded, "What I'm being told is he is stuck in the lav. Someone with a thick foreign accent is giving me a password to access the cockpit, and I'm not about to let him in." He then asked for the appropriate course of action.

Via Airport-int.com"The most important thing is to determine whether you're in a dark comedy or something more slapstick."

He was ordered by the controllers to initiate an emergency landing while they prepared to call everyone from fighter squadrons to Delta Force to prevent the next 9/11. But before the situation spun completely and hilariously out of control, the pilot was able to force his way out of his toilet prison and let himself back into the cockpit, where, to the relief of all, he notified the ground that everything was fine and that he really had gotten stuck in the bathroom like a magnificent dumbass. Presumably the passenger was still arrested for the act of banging on a cockpit door while in possession of a foreign accent.

Getty"If you're innocent, sir, then how do you explain the cloth on your head, let alone the mustache?"

#4. A Pilot Narrowly Avoids the Planet Venus

For most humans, our brain is never less functional than at the moment we wake up, which you already know if you've ever spent 20 minutes trying to "answer" your alarm clock because you were just having a dream that Commissioner Gordon was calling you on the Batphone. So you can imagine what can go wrong if you were to, say, wake up behind the stick of an airliner.

In January of 2011, the drowsy first officer of an Air Canada flight traveling from Toronto to Zurich decided to get in some nap time, which is actually permissible under that airline's rules and is not uncommon for transcontinental flights. A little more than an hour later, he woke up, sleepily scraping the eye boogers of upper atmosphere from his face. At this point, he overheard the pilot calmly and matter-of-factly mention that there was a U.S. military aircraft in the vicinity. No big deal.

GettyThey almost never bite.

But the muddled officer looked out of the front windshield and noticed what appeared to be the exterior lights from an oncoming plane, heading right for them. "Holy shit!" he thought, "It's that military plane the pilot just mentioned! It's not just in our vicinity, it's about to ram us out of the fucking sky! Shiiiiiiiiiit!"

Getty"If we plunge into a zero-gravity dive, the captain recommends attempting either a wicked flip or boning somebody."

After completing this bone-jarring maneuver, the flight officer probably looked over to the pilot with his hand raised and ready to receive a high-five. He was likely instead met with the cold hard stare of a man contemplating the best way to dropkick a co-worker through the emergency exit. The lights of the oncoming craft turned out to be the planet Venus, which, while on their trajectory, they were in no real danger of hitting.

The first officer's emergency dive, however, had put the plane dangerously close to the actual location of the aforementioned military plane, which was coasting along only 1,000 feet below. Oh, and 16 passengers claimed injury as a result of getting tossed around by the sudden maneuver, and a class action lawsuit for $20 million is in the works.